Painting Challenge entry 8: Converted Beutepanzer

After some mishaps the looted Universal Carrier is finally finished. First looking for suitable readymade rivets, before settling on using putty, delayed it a bit and then right when I thought I was done I noticed I had forgotten decals... Well here it is in all it's glory

But first I'd really like to thank my mysterious benefactor for this Christmas gift! It was definately a very thoughtful gift and there must have been quite a lot of thought put into it with all the bits and pieces gathered with the instructions! So a big thank you for an extremely fun build and a great model that will definately stand out on the gaming table!

The kit consists of a plastic Warlord Games Universal Carrier with a PaK36 and it's crew from one of their 251 sets. The gun actually doesn't require too much modification with only a small part being cut off from it's mounting and a gun shield being built from plasticard. The driver and machine-gunner are both the original British crewmen with just a headswap. The uniform looks remarkably same as the German one even when checking it close up.

As my other German stuff is painted with a soft tone 3-colour camouflage I decided to do the same on this one. I just painted it randomly with my airbrush trying to leave about equal shares of each paint shade showing. After adding chipping I applied a gloss coat followed by a few different enamel washes. The washes were allowed to set in before being wiped off vertically. This already provides nice variation to the paint scheme, but I decided to add some streaking with rust and oil shades. When removing the shade I had some issues with the basecoat peeling off again. Vallejo grey primer doesn't really seem to bind very well to flat surfaces. Luckily all of the areas where this happened were in the bottom part of the model so I was able to hide them with the final muddying up.

All done... or not

I've been happily working on the looted Universal Carrier doing all the weathering over the last couple of days. All the time I had a nagging feeling in my head that there's something I've forgotten, but going through the model multiple times I found no unpainted spots. Well now I've got all the weathering effects done and I was just going to apply a final coat of matt varnish when it hit me. I had forgotten the bloody decals!!

I had planned on putting massive Balkan Crosses around the tiny tank as recognition for friendlies, but now they seem to be rolling out all camouflaged. Oh well a few steps back as I now have to apply decals, another coat of gloss varnish, do weathering over the decalled areas and then varnish everything again... Just as I was happy that I finished something in only a few days and then I have to go back and redo stuff. And it will take some time too as the enamel washes take 4-5 hours to dry before anything can be added on top...

Being annoyed at my mistake I decided to work on something completely different. I've had this 80s Citadel Chaos Toilet sitting on my desk for quite a while now waiting for some excuse to paint it up. I've skipped most of the themed challenges until now, but this was too good to skip as it should be a quick paint job and I reckon a chaotic man eating toilet suits the Comedy section quite nicely.

Santa's gifts are on the table

A week or so back I finally finished building up my Secret Santa gift of a Universal Carrier and conversion bits to turn it into a German looted PaK36 carrier. I had originally planned to do rivets with plastic rod, but I was unable to find any of the right size at my local stores. So I finally I abandoned that and went with Tamiya Plastic Putty drops that were shaped into something that remotely looked like rivets or bolts. Finally some additional gear from my various German left over sprues. I've now finished most of the basic paintjob. Still some stowage to finish before applying a gloss coat and starting the fun part that is weathering and muddying the tiny vehicle.

As is usual with my hobby workflow I'm unable to just stick to one project. The 15mm German project is going forward as well with 4 Anti-air halftracks based and the first paint layers and drybrushes applied. I've also started on 2 objective markers for the army. And finally there's a Sarissa Chateau that will be needed for my clubs Bolt Action game day where I'm hosting a Commando inspired scenario. I've also got a squad of Wehrmacht soldiers standing guard and some Feldgendarmerie lined up and waiting for a basecoat.

The Chateau is mostly finished and now I'm just adding extra detail in the form of Warbases roof tiles. Half of the roof is done, but still left to do is the most time consuming side with 3 windows that will require quite a bit of cutting and trying to match up all the rows of roof tiling. Extremely time consuming, but it really makes the building look much more realistic compared to the totally 2D roof tiles on the normal MDF roof.

Painting Challenge entry 7: German support weapons

Back to my Barbarossa German project again with most of their support weapons. An infantry gun platoon and two anti-tank platoons of two guns each. I'm probably going to run the PaK38's as one platoon of 3 guns, but they are sold in blisters of two so I painted the extra anyway.

My local hobby store finally got a restock of clump foliage so I added that to the bases to get some variety. I've also been going back to the previous Panzerschützen to enhance their bases too and add some foliage to the trees that were on the bases. I really hate going back to stuff that was already finished, but didn't really have a choice this time.

With these done I've only got 3 platoons of Germans left to finish. I've got 4 Sdkfz 10/5 anti-air half-tracks on the way and some smoke launchers prepped which should be quite a breeze to paint up. The final missing platoon is a large motorized pioneer platoon, with 10 infantry stands, 9 vehicles and one motorcycle team so there's quite a lot to paint up still.